Google and the EU are on a collision course over the trade bloc's anti-trust charges.

It had been widely expected that Google would try to avoid a huge fine and other sanctions by giving in, but it seems that the search engine is minded to go the way of Microsoft.

The European Commission in April accused it of distorting internet search results to favour its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers.

Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, wrote in a blog that economic data spanning more than a decade, an array of documents and statements from complainants all confirm that product search is robustly competitive.

"We believe that the statement of objection's preliminary conclusions are wrong as a matter of fact, law, and economics."

The comments coincide with the company's 150-page submission countering the Commission's charges.

"We will carefully consider Google's response before taking any decision on how to proceed and do not want to prejudge the final outcome of the investigation," he said.

If found guilty, the company could face a fine set at a level sufficient to ensure deterrence, according to the Commission's charge sheet seen by Reuters. The EU antitrust authority can sanction wrongdoers up to 10 percent of their global turnover.

In his blog, Walker said the EU authority had failed to take into account strong competition from online retailers Amazon.com and eBay.

He also said internet traffic had risen by 227 percent in the last decade in the countries where the Commission said it had abused its power to the detriment of rivals.

Walker said the regulator's demand that Google give equal treatment to its rivals was "peculiar and problematic" and only justifiable if the company provided an essential service like an electricity company.

Thomas Vinje, a lawyer at lobby group FairSearch, whose members include Microsoft, Nokia and TripAdviso said that these were the same sort of arguments defendants in big European antitrust cases always make.

They traditionally argue that the antitrust authorities just don't get it, and that the remedy they demand cannot be implemented without causing technical and market chaos.

However in all those cases it always goes pear-shaped for those accused – just ask Intel and Microsoft.

A war is brewing between PC makers and the first shots will be fired the moment Skylake hits the shops.

This is a little odd as many expected any price wars to happen once Windows 10 was released, but it appears that the perfect storm is also the release of Skylake.

Digitimes says that Asustek and Gigabyte have both prepared Z170-based motherboards with their most advanced technologies, looking to further expand their shares in the market.This will start a Skylake war which could result in second- and third-tier vendors being forced out of the industry.

Asustek has four Z170-based motherboards, the ROG series for the top-end gaming, the Pro Gaming series, the Signature series for and the TUF series.

Gigabyte has three series for its Z170 motherboards: The G1 Gaming series, the UD series and the OC series for overclocking purposes.

Gigabyte's Z170 motherboards will use Intel's USB 3.1 solution as well as its power management technology.

All this will mean price cuts, discounts, and lower margins as the pair aim for dominance. All good for the consumer.

It is starting to look like there will be a chip price war as AMD drops prices on Trinity. Word on the street is that Chipzilla is getting to ready to drop its prices too.

AMD has priced the Trinity chips starting at $53 in quantities of 1,000. Its new new dual-core A4-5300 desktop processors are priced at $53, which is the lowest of all Trinity desktop chips. It is much lower than the Intel Core i3 processors, which are based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture and start at $117.

AMD also shipped the new A10-5800K chip that can be unlocked for $122. Intel's unlockable processors start at $216, according to a price list. We should know today after AMD announces its pricing on other Trinity chips.

Already Lenovo earlier this week announced the ThinkCentre M78 desktop, using AMD's new chips to get a price tag of $479. The cheapest Lenovo desktop with an Intel Core processor is the ThinkCentre M72e, which starts at $659 with a Core i3-2120.

With sales slowing the only way that the two can keep inventory moving is to have a price war. At the moment the only way to tell them apart is that Intel's Ivy Bridge chips are better in overall performance and AMD's Trinity chips offer better graphics.

If the price of AMD chips drops then the performance gains in keeping an Intel system are not worth the money.

XFX was always known for its peculiar marketing strategies that are known to get a lot of attention, and the most recent one is definitely not an exception.

The company came with a campaign where "XFX declares W.A.R" on inferior graphics cards. The "W.A.R" part stands for wreak and ruin while the basic idea is to tell XFX why you'd like to destroy your inferior non-AMD Graphics Card.

The good news is that if you win, XFX will make you a proud owner of its R7970 graphics card. There is a catch though - if you get the XFX R7970, you will have to destroy your card.

The competition is open for EU residents and you need to visit XFX's Facebook page, like it and enter your W.A.R related idea.

You can find XFX Europe Facebook page here. You can get more rules and details here.

Fruit themed toymaker Apple's legal tactics to kill off its main smartphone rival in court, rather than doing normal thinks like compete, has run aground. Jobs' Mob wanted to get the new Samsung G3 banned, before it could kill off the iPhone, but found that its earlier legal tactics had counted against it.

The problem was that it thought it would be a good idea loading US District Court Judge Lucy Koh with complaints in the hope that something would stick. Now she says she is a little too busy to deal with a new one and does not want to lump the new Samsung complaints with the old ones. Koh said that if Apple seeks to file a motion to enjoin sales of the Samsung Galaxy S3, Apple will have to request a new hearing date from the Court.

Samsung is launching the new phone in the US on 21 June. It already has good reviews and in some aspects makes the Jobs' Mob effort look steam powered.

Apple has not changed its iPhone format much for ages. The iPhone 4S just had a voice activated search gimmick called Siri, which didn't work properly outside of the US and refused to direct you to anywhere that was immoral. The search engine had to be “fixed” later when it started recommending that you buy a Samsung Android phone instead.

Following Google’s accusations that Nokia was scheming with Microsoft when it comes to intellectual property, Nokia responded by good old tactics of shifting attention to patent issues on Android devices. That is after Microsoft said that Google's complaint was a desperate tactic from someone who controls more than 95 percent of mobile search and advertising cake.

Nokia’s spokesperson Mark Durrant said that although the company hasn’t seen the complaint over its “colluding on intellectual property” with Microsoft, it is still wrong. He said Nokia and Microsoft have own, independent portfolios, strategies and operation.

Durrant pointed out however that some Android devices have significant infringement issues of Nokia patents. Google already complained to the European Commission, claiming that Microsoft and Nokia transferred 1,200 patents to patent troll MOSAID.

With the company going through one of the worst, if not the words, times in history of the company, its patents have turned out to be quite a lucrative business. Namely, the company earns about €500 million/$618 million annually from mobile telephony patents.

Apparently, some analysts claim that a more serious patent rights management could significantly increase these figures even further. Yaay, who needs phones and innovation when you have such delicious patent wars?

Apple's anticompetitive plan to patent troll Android into oblivion hit a brick wall in Spain in what should have been an easy victory.

The Apple legal team pulled out all stops to shut down a small maker of Android tablets. This included trying get the police to arrest and jail Nuevas Tecnologias y Energias Catala (NT-K) bosses.

NT-K has successfully appealed a 2010 injunction from a local court to ban the import of its tablet computer manufactured in China to Spain. Pedro David Pelaez, a founding partner of NT-K said that it was fairly clear that Apple was trying to keep as many tablets from entering the market as possible.

NT-K, the company from the Valencia region of Spain is demanding compensation from Apple for losses during the ban of its product and is suing the U.S. giant for alleged anticompetitive behaviour. NT-K, which is also developing a software for computerized ordering at restaurants, had before the legal problems forecast the sale of 15,000 tablets in 2011 for a total of between 4.5 million and 5.0 million euros, Pelaez said.

What was particularly nasty was that Apple threatened and then carried through on its threat to lay criminal charges against NT-K. It had worked against other small tablet makers who rolled over. Fortunately NT-K didn't.

Before he died, Steve Jobs said he was prepared to use Apple's cash surplus to kill off Android which he regarded as a personal slight from Google. But its recent court battles are actually making the company look like evil bullies.

Senior Chinese officials have denied that it is attacking servers in the United States.

Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said that while everyone is claiming that there is a cyber cold war between the US and China it is rubbish. The two countries might suffer from cyber attacks, but they were in no way directed by either government, he said.

While it is not unusual for China to deny that it carries out attacks, it is rare for it defend the US saying that it is not doing them either. Earlier this month, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Washington was concerned about cyber-attacks and was prepared to use force against any it considered an act of war.

However if the US did declare on war on China, its consumers would lose most of their manufactured products. It is unlikely that the US would want to anger consumers by dropping bombs on the country which makes its iPads.

Nokia has opened a new front in its trademark war against Apple by launching 13 new trademark complaints in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The former maker of rubberware now claims that Jobs Mob nicked 24 of its patents, including the technology behind touchscreens and on-device app stores.

It is its fourth lawsuit against Apple since the 14-month legal battle between the two companies began. Apple is also counter-suing Nokia for alleged patent infringements in the UK and US. Apple is also suing manufacturers Motororola, HTC and multiple vendors running Google's Android operating system. Motorola last month announced that it is also suing Microsoft.

Nokia is claiming that its technologies were developed more than a decade before the launch of Apple's iPhone. It has said that it has been trying to negotiate with Apple for years. But every year you wait Apple's mobile business grows. If Nokia wins then Jobs' huge profits could disappear.

The first case will not go to court until late next year, probably in the Hague, Netherlands.

The Blighty government is placing sandbags around its servers, installing searchlights, barrage balloons and reading itself to fight script kiddies on the beaches. The UK fears that when it extradites Wikileaks Julian Assange to Sweden to face his accusers in a controversial sex case, the likes of 4Chan and Anonymous will "go mental".

To be fair to the government, there is nothing it can do. If it ignored Europe's extradition procedure and hung onto Assange, it would be giving the green light to every villian to move to blighty. There they can defend against extradition to their homeland on the basis that "if it is good enough for Assange it is good enough for a father stabbing, mother raping, drug dealer." So all Whitehall can do is shore of the defences and hope it can ride the coming storm.

Extra security measures have been added to a host of government web services, in particular those used to claim benefits or provide tax information. The theory is that the entire world of 4Chan will blitz blighty.

The anger of Assange's supporters is likely to be increased by a claim from his British lawyer yesterday that a grand jury has been secretly empanelled in Virginia to consider charges against the Australian over the diplomatic telegrams. Internet activists have already targeted the website of the Swedish judicial authorities bringing the sex charges allegations against Assange.

Whitehall is expecting a hack into databases or a distributed denial-of-service (DdoS) attack. Part of Whitehalls problem is a stupid Coalition government directive to "save money" by not updating Internet Explorer. Whitehall is now stuck with a geriatric version of IE which is so full of bugs that Microsoft does not want to have anything to do with it.

Of course the millions of pounds of damage that Anonymous will do thanks to this "saving" does not seem to have occurred to the Coalition. It would appear that Britain has not been so ably lead in a war since Lord Cardigan thought it was a good idea to charge his Light Brigade at the wrong guns during the Crimean war.

A spokesman for David Cameron's office said that the priority would be websites where we are dealing with information that belongs to members of the public. So if 4Chan attacks the databases or internal networks they will be unprotected.

There is little that Whitehall can do against a DoS attack on a website if it is determined enough.